Evgeni Nabokov

Ed. Note: In our continuing quest to bring you the least crappy product possible, we’d like to welcome Ana Hansen of the blog Hockey Yelling to the RMNB team. Ana, a 22-year-old English major at William & Mary, is witty, creative, and mentally unstable. So uhh you better give her a warm welcome in the comments below or else. You can follow her on Twitter here.

Hello Caps world! In the place of your regularly scheduled coverage you’ve got me tonight. My condolences, but not too many of them, because a hockey game happened, and that’s more important than anything else.

We lost this game, which I hope does not mean that I’m bad luck. I will be carefully monitoring this issue from here on out.

To the game, somewhat reluctantly I guess. We were supposed to win this one. The Islanders are not a particularly lethal team, but when they’re given this much space, even they can stumble into a few goals.

Tavares opened the scoring with a redirection on the PP, and the first person to mention his scoring streak gets a punch in the kisser. Parenteau made it 2-0 on a joint effort from Carlzner, Alzner with the giveaway and Carlson screening his own goalie. You’re welcome, Pareteau. Parenteau converted on the PP for his second of the night but luckily by that point, you were probably too numb to feel it. Caps lose, 3-0. Gross.

The Pre Game: So my doctor says I need to relax more. He suggests writing: it’s solitary, quiet, and engages the “more refined aspects” of our minds, he says. Which is funny, considering that the more I think about Long Island, the harder I find it is to type with clenched fists.

The Puck Drop: It’s difficult to know what to say about the 516 that is refined. Or funny. A better word is sad. It’s a place where ‘ugg’ boots aren’t a brand so much as a reaction to the Designer Shoe Outlet knock-off sleds that women strap on to their feet. A place where professional people dress like it’s Halloween every day. Like I said, sad, really. That such an idyllic spot could be inhabited by so many groaners perhaps argues that God indeed really did die, or at least go on extended vacation, thus leaving Creation in the hands of people who consider Billy Joel relevant. But enough theology.

As far as the Islanders, they haven’t been a role model for decades. Save, maybe, for people who suffer from Imposter Syndrome for good reason. Heck, just insert any “X” into the X > Tebow meme, and replace Tebow with the Islanders, and you get the idea. “Godfathers Pizza > Islanders.” Gold.

Alex Ovechkin and his friends have left Vancouver by now, and surely that’s a good thing. For the greatest conglomeration of hockey talent we may ever see, Team Russia played like amateurs. The 2010 Men’s Olympic hockey tournament was a disaster for the Russians, and that comes as a surprise to many of us. But why did the Russian Machine break? (Did you really think we’d let that go?)

With NHL Games starting at 3am or later in Russia and the KHL starting to find more and more traction, we were interested who Russians talked about and followed the most. Would it be an NHL Player? Would it be a KHL Player? We felt this post was necessary because the media coverage in Washington makes a lot of people assume Alex Ovechkin is the most revered sportsman in the country. He has a huge following – to the point where he’s been on Game Shows and in Music Videos – but you’ll be surprised by what we found today. They’re all yours Fedor.]

Okay, I bet if you had to pick one person to be the most popular hockey player in Russia, you’d pick Alex Ovechkin. This is a great guess, but it’s not 100% true. Let’s check what hockey players Russian users search for the most using the Russian Search Engine “Yandex.” It is the most used Search Engine (51% of search market) in our country.